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Touring Tamarind Road: Affordable Freehold Houses In A Spacious, Quiet Landed Estate (From $3.5 Million)
Published 10 Dec 2023 |
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8min read
BY TJPublished 10 Dec 20231 comments | 8min read
BY TJ
TJ's interest in property was sparked after returning from the UK- where balconies are not counted in one's square footage!- and finding that the Singapore property had totally changed in the 7 years she was away. When not reading and watching articles & videos about property, she is busy cooking and baking for friends, family & her blog Greedygirlgourmet
Quite a while ago (sorry for the delay), a reader requested a review of Tamarind Road. It’s pretty far out, so it took me a while to get there, but we’re finally there today!
Let me show you exactly what I mean by quiet:
This is the main entrance to the Tamarind Road estate. As you can see, it’s so far out, there are almost no cars around.There is a bus stop though. As you can see above, bus 854 passes this way, as do 70, 70M, 86, 163, and 163B.No traffic to the right either.As shown on the map above, there is nothing in the vicinity worth walking to (no mall or shops) so let’s just head into the estate. (The closest is Begonia Supermarket, a small convenience shop over at Begonia Road, about a 5-8 minute walk from Tamarind Road. If you walk 16 minutes, you’ll reach Greenwich V, a small shopping mall.) This is the kind of housing estate that you’ll ideally need a car to enjoy living in.
So now let’s head in!
Dengue sign at the entrance – the area was a red alert cluster in 2020.Right at the entrance, there are two childcare centres: Raffles Kids @ Yio Chu Kang and Da Little Preschool in Tamarind. I like this arrangement, because childcare centres and main roads tend to be noisy. This way, the noise is kept on the same side of the houses, instead of the houses being sandwiched in between two sources of noise.The school has quite a spacious garden playground.Passed a nice, modern and large house. You can’t even see the other property in the same photo!As I walk in, the properties took on a more vintage condition.But probably not for much longer, as there were quite a few properties being rebuilt/renovated.This is what the preschool and childcare centres look like from the front.Whilst it wasn’t difficult to find parking space (mind you this was taken during working hours so everyone was probably at work), the dust bins on the road hint that this may not be the case later in the day. (Also when you consider how far out the houses here are, it seems highly likely that every property would have at least one car.)Pair of semi-Ds.Oh, this probably is a better illustration of the parking situation – if parking were plentiful, residents wouldn’t have to resort to parking on the pavement AND reserving parking space with dustbins!This may not be the best photo of it, but the house on the left is about a level higher than the one on the right, so there’s obviously room for the older houses’ plot ratio to be maximised.Here’s a straight-on photo that gives you a better idea.More houses being redeveloped.I guess I was right about residents here having several cars!Love the shutters on the left!Inside the Tamarind landed enclave, there’s also a canal, with a walkway beside it, which reminds me of Kovan estate. (The canal helps to increase the setback between the houses, making the area feel less cluttered.)Another positive here is the walkable pedestrian paths – unlike Jalan Jelita, the pathways here are large and clear enough to be of use.Residents also obviously care about their neighbourhood, and have taken pains with the landscaping.One thing I noticed is that the bigger houses were further in and further away from the main road. (This house, for example, doesn’t look like it’ll have parking space issues.)As we go further in, the neighbourhood also starts feeling more “posh”, what with the trees and all.There’s also this lovely large playground.It’s the Tamarind Road Playground.And also provides residents with a shortcut to the main road (see where the cars are? That’s the main road that we saw at the start of this article.)These are some of the houses bordering the playground.Behind the playground is this condo which I believe to be Serenity Park. It’s zoned 1.4, so is capped at 5 stories, ensuring that the houses keep their unblocked surroundings.There’s also a decent distance between the houses and the condo. In fact, you may have more space between you and your neighbour if you’re next to the condo compared to next to another house!These are the houses next to the condo, again with a very long driveway, so not lacking in parking space.And those are the houses on the other side of the road.Turning around and looking in the direction from which we came. Nice and quiet as you can see. (I did not see a SINGLE person walking around the estate during this walkabout.)See what I mean about how the houses deeper in are bigger?Example 2.Example 3.Not much to see when it’s all big houses so let’s go down this way.We start seeing more cars parked on the road here (closer to the condo entrance) which makes me wonder how much visitor parking they have.Here’s the condo entrance.Oh, no wonder we’re seeing more cars on the road – this is where the terrace houses are located. (Generally, terrace house areas have more parking issues.)Having said that, the terrace houses here aren’t small. They look like they can park 2-3 cars.I must say this is one of the better streets with terrace houses that I’ve seen.This is the distance between the terrace units and the Serenity Park condo.And this is what the street outside the terrace houses looks like.Interestingly enough, the houses opposite the terrace units look to be detached (or semi-D) units.Cool street sign.Here’s a photo for you to gauge the spacing between the corner units.Some have a lane in between them, widening the setback even further.As you can see, you can park two cars with the gate closed and possibly three if you leave the gate open.There are also single-storey units if you are looking to totally rebuild. (None for sale at the time of writing, only semi-Ds for a pretty penny.)
On the note of houses for sale, let’s look at the sales history of the area.
As shown on Edgeprop, the last sale was a semi-D in October 2023 for $3.85 million. Given that it’s hard to find even a terrace house for $3m+ nowadays, this seems like not too bad a price. However, there aren’t that many transactions in the area (2 in 2023, 1 in 2022…) so it’s hard to establish a pattern. The PSFs and selling prices are quite all over the place.If we look at the Master Plan, we can see that the area across Yio Chu Kang Road is a Business District and the area to the top left is a reserve site. There’s also a special use land to the bottom left. (See why I say the area is lacking in amenities?)
However, the huge piece of reserve land also represents an opportunity, as it could potentially be developed into new infrastructure for the surrounding area in the future. (We will have to see.)
That brings us to the end of today’s tour. How did you find Tamarind Road? Let me know in the comments!
TJ's interest in property was sparked after returning from the UK- where balconies are not counted in one's square footage!- and finding that the Singapore property had totally changed in the 7 years she was away. When not reading and watching articles & videos about property, she is busy cooking and baking for friends, family & her blog Greedygirlgourmet
The house that sold in Oct 2023 at S$3.58m is actually a newly rebuilt house (house number can be seen via subscription). The house was never advertised for sale so you cannot count that as a real indication of prices in the area (as it could probably be an internal sale between relatives). If you do a search on propertyguru, an original unit of that land size there is now asking for S$4.88m. It is quite unbelievable that a 2023 house is sold cheaper than previous years so more research is appreciated.
The house that sold in Oct 2023 at S$3.58m is actually a newly rebuilt house (house number can be seen via subscription). The house was never advertised for sale so you cannot count that as a real indication of prices in the area (as it could probably be an internal sale between relatives). If you do a search on propertyguru, an original unit of that land size there is now asking for S$4.88m. It is quite unbelievable that a 2023 house is sold cheaper than previous years so more research is appreciated.